Commenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.]

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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Mali: Mission Accomplished! Hollande’s Bush Moment:

Still No Crazy Glue in Sight

As Colin Powell famously warned George H.W. Bush on the eve of the
invasion of Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.”

France is not responsible for “breaking” Mali. The country was
already a West African basket case long before the French intervention.

But France, which enraged many Americans by refusing to
participate in the invasion of Iraq, now finds itself stuck with the results of
their own intervention.And
there’s no crazy glue in sight.

That’s what I wrote
a couple of months ago after President Francois Hollande dispatched French
troops to Mali.

The irony today is that not only is there no obvious solution to
Mali’s plight, but Hollande himself is having enormous problems running his own
deeply troubled country.

Back in January Hollande’s aides hoped that a forceful
intervention in Mali would give the lie to the charge that he was a feeble,
indecisive leader.

But now, in mid April, with 4,600 French troops in Mali, the
magazine L’Express is running an
abject photo of Holland on the cover, over the humiliating headline: “M. FAIBLE.” (Mister WEAK). Similar devastatingly
mocking jibes fill the media—from all sides of the political spectrum.

Indeed,
with Hollande confronting a major domestic political crisis, after his Budget
Minister-in charge of collecting taxes--admitted to having stashed money in secret
bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore, the president’s popularity is still
plummeting (now about 20%).

It’s
being driven ever lower by France’s abysmal economic situation,mounting crime and racial tensions.
With three of Hollande’s own ministers now publicly challenging the
government’s economic program, the ineluctable conclusion is that no one’s really
in charge.

Yet
this is the same man who is supposedly leading the battle to save Mali from
ruin.

When
France intervened in January, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius vowed the action
would be over in “a matter of weeks.”

Now
in mid April, 4,600 French troops are still in the country, supported by about
6,000 soldiers from several African states. Led by the French, they’ve retaken most
of the major population centers from the jihadists who had threatened to
overrun the country. They’ve also pummeled rebel redoubts in the North, reportedly
killing hundreds of radicals and destroying tons of equipment.

Yet
the situation is still tense. Islamists who had faded into the villages and
rugged mountains are still capable of deadly hit-and-run attacks. And the ethnic
Tuaregs in the North, who began the rebellion, are still demanding autonomy or
independence.

Hollandeis also out on a limb. Though he claimed
he was acting to protect Europe from radical Islam spreading in Africa, he has
received precious little support from his European allies. Nor—aside from some
important intelligence and logistics support—has he received much real backing from
the United States.After Iraq and
Afghanistan, no one is rushing to get involved in yet another quagmire.

Meanwhile
the Mali adventure is
costing France—whose budget is already in disarray-- close to three million
Euros a day—probably much more. By this summer, the cost will probably have
risen to at least half a billion Euros…and counting.

Hollande’s predicament now is not that different from the one
facing President Obama in Afghanistan: how to drastically decrease France’s
involvement in Mali without making it look like France has cut and run, leaving
an unseemly chaos in his wake.

The
solution: France will turn over the mess in their former colony, as soon as
possible, to a new “democratically-elected” Malian government.

Thus
it was that Hollande dispatched Foreign Minister Fabius to Bamako to lay down
his dictat to the major political
actors: presidential and
legislative elections were to be held by July.

The
rebel Tuaregs were supposed to lay down their arms, though they still occupy Kidal
and a part of Northern Mali; a French reaction force would stay in place to
ensure that “the terrorists” didn’t come back.

We
imagine the plans also include a kind of George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” moment:
A beaming Hollande attending the inauguration of Mali’s new leaders. He salutes
the sacrifice of the heroic French and African troops, vows undying support for
the future of France’s former colony--and continues to withdraw French troops.

By
the end of 2013 only 1000 French troops will be left to work with a UN
Peacekeeping Force from other mainly African countries.

That’s
the deal. The problem, according to many observers, is that attempting to hold meaningful--never
mind democratic-- elections by July is just a wishful figment of Hollande’s
desperate imagination--a frail fig leaf for France.

Even
if Mali were secure, the idea that it might be possible to organize a real
campaign in a country twice the size of France, draw up lists of electors when
at least 400,000 Malians from the north have fled south or to their African
neighbors, is a chimera.

With
no time for new political leaders or parties to organize and present
themselves, the field is left to the same threadbare, corrupt politicians who
presided over the country’s ruin and final collapse in 2012.

After
that debacle, it turned out that what had once been trumpeted as a showcase for
post-colonial government in Africa, was in fact a“Potemkin” democracy—all façade, no substance.

Which
will probably be the upshot of the elections scheduled for July (if they
actually take place.)

The
scenario after that: those 1,000 French troops, with 10,000 soldiers and police
from the new U.N. force—many of them poorly equipped and trained—will somehow maintain
order in Mali’s restive towns and cities and vast hinterlands, while the new
government struggles to resolve the country’s huge
problems, made even more desperate by the changing climate of the Sahel.

Bottom
line: fifty years after it became independent, Mali has still to rely on its
former colonial ruler to keep the country intact.

But after half a century, France, like the other
once great powers, no longer has the appetite nor the resources to play a colonial
role. Hollande, as we’ve noted, is having a hell of a time, just attempting to rule
his own restive nation.

Nor for that matter does the United States have
much in the way of state-building zeal these days. President Obama would much rather
deal with terrorist threats through killer drones, than boots on the ground and
massive aid programs.

Which
means that imposing elections for July on Mali, though a flawed, cynical step,
may be the only realistic way forward. It may at least get some kind of
political process sputtering again.

And France and the rest of the world will provide
some aid, some investment, some military training—and Mali and its peoples will
almost certainly endure decades more of political turbulence and strife.

Their desperate situation will be mirrored in the
turmoil, which may also last for decades, of failing states across the region, from Tunis to
Libya to Egypt to Syria.

After all, the reverberations of the French Revolution,
which took place in 1789, are still being felt in France to this day.

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About Me

Originally from Vancouver, studied at Harvard, Harvard Law and Columbia University, then correspondent for Time Life in South America, and 30 years as Producer with 60 Minutes in Washington D.C. and Paris, where I now live. Wrote book on history of Western Invervention in Iraq, Web of Deceit, now writing a novel, painting, travelling, visiting friends and relatives.